even on your very best day.

My dearest teenager,

There is something you should know about me, and I’m going to give you the benefit of hearing this now, before you do something dumb. Even on your very best day, when you think you’re super sneaky and have reached genius level clever, you still won’t be as good as me on my worst day ever. So, I would strongly suggest you keep that in mind before you mistake my easy going kindness for stupidity. 

Typically the response is the absolute worst fake rendition of shock and awe that I’d even suggest such a thing. Followed by total denial that they may have possibly even done anything they shouldn’t. Every so often, the kiddo spills their beans, assuming I already know anyway. Sometimes that assumption is correct and sometimes it’s not. Today was the typical response and as per usual, the performance was less than award winning. 

I’ve given this same speech at least a dozen times in my parenting lifetime. It is one of my favorites and it works, well. If it didn’t, one of these teenage girls would have broken me already. Ha ha. 

Anyway I get the following text message. Mind you “the teenagers” really enjoy their own spaces and their beds. So even when I am within earshot, they opt to text me. Real conversations and interactions with others are just not “cool.” So the text message:

Is it just me or the very specific 3:40pm return from a generic bike ride seem, I dunno, bizarre? Ummm ok. 3:40pm. It isn’t lost on me that I asked where and the actual destination was left out of the response. Ok. Noted. 

They drag their feet, fill water bottles, dress for an expedition across Antarctica, because it’s 80 degrees and shorts are reserved for snow. The pair don’t end up heading out until 2:30pm. 

Around 3:00pm I decide it’s been a fair amount of time to make a bad choice, so I pull up Life360. Instead of a location, it says location services are turned off as of 2:36pm. I reach out and request it be turned on and I’m sure you already know the response. 

“Sorry. I didn’t know it was off.”

Fascinating. Thankfully I have other ways of keeping tabs on my little lovelies, and that places them in a wooded area for a questionable period of time. About 3:20pm the locations services are back on just as they are within line of site. Crazy how that works. 

So they approach because someone has to use the bathroom. I feel like I should thank someone for not peeing in the woods, but figure I’ll save my smart ass commentary for later. Potty break complete and here is where I insert my “you’re not that clever” speech. 

As they walked off, both looked at each other with the most confused and uncertain looks on their faces. Those two are going to spend the rest of the afternoon wondering if I actually know what they were up to or not. 

Mission accomplished.